People who use Notion to plan their whole lives

Both times I did that they were extremely helpful to achieve my goals. Too much of what we do is on autopilot. Noticing what you're doing is a helpful way to course correct before you're 10k over budget or 5 pounds heavier.

You have to do it in a healthy manner though, you can't obsess about tracking. Be gentle with yourself and know you'll make mistakes, both in tracking and what you're doing.

My generation knows what a file is.

Generation after me does that.

I will share some personal experience on this journey.

I like to be organized where I need to. I worked up a TODO list habit and a note taking habit over time. At first it was pen and paper. Then plain text notes. Then Evernote. And now it's Notion.

Regardless of the tool, there were times when I overdid it. I became too meticulous. The TODO list, instead of keeping me organized and my mind free, became the source of my work and worry.

I iterated over time, and have built up a system that works for me. Whenever I feel that something becomes too heavy, I trim it. Notion is nice because it allows me to be flexible. It's more like a notebook with superpowers than Jira and Asana.

If you're obsessive and don't catch yourself, Notion can become the source of troubles. But so can cataloging your CD collection.

I recently shared my TODO list workflow with someone. I have a daily and weekly template and they're quite involved. The person was surprised asked me if I ever get stressed if I don't do it all. Not at all, I said. What I don't do gets thrown away and I start over tomorrow. It keeps me structured and organized, but I am not its slave.

It's not how involved your system is. It's how much it works for you, vs working against you.

Counterpoint: Turning the important things into a checklist so you don't forget about them, and get them done quickly frees up time to live your life.